Simon Mignolet: Liverpool goalkeeper mobbed by his team-mates after his penalty

The Belgium international, who joined the Reds from Sunderland this summer, made a double save from Jon Walters' last-gasp penalty to earn Liverpool a 1-0 victory over Stoke on the opening day of the Premier League season.

Mignolet said: "There is an unwritten law in football that if you play well and don't take your chances, there will be chances for the opposition.

"I was thinking that, the longer the game went on. I had a feeling they would equalise in the last minute, really."

He added: "It was the debut that you dream of. I had hoped to do something like that, but you never really think you will. Saving a penalty in the last minute, on your first game for Liverpool.

"It can have a damaging effect if you play well and don't win. We can now go to the next game being relaxed that we can do the same things we have done, rather than feeling anxious that we have to win.

"It does change things. This time we won and that hasn't happened too often for Liverpool on the opening day of the season in recent years. This is very important to set our season off."

Most Commented

Readers' Comments

I

t's wrong to be making a joke out of Bender's name at the expense of gay people. It's the kind of childish, uncivilised thing that Football365 would deride and ridicule if it was another media outlet saying. Why is there a need for jokes like this? Does it make your writers feel like men? F365 might suggest that I 'lighten up', but it is genuinely traumatic for people who have been oppressed all their lives to be the butt of jokes, and to be told...

ou can't blame De Gea for wanting to leave, he has enough to do in front of goal as it is as well as taking on the role of Man Utd's version of Derek Acorah in trying to contact and organise a defence that isn't there.